Funding is a crucial part of an iGEM project for several teams. As a Latin American team, we can say that funding was one of our biggest concerns. Since the beginning of BioPank, we wondered how we would get all the money we needed and brainstormed for days until we stopped at two options: 1- crowdfunding or 2- sponsorship.
At this point, the tiebreaker was to consider the economic and social context of our country. It is no secret that Brazil struggled severely since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, and all of these reflected in the entire economy, in people's lives, and in our choice on how to proceed. The team agreed that we wouldn’t ask our community for money*, via crowdfunding and from this, we directed all of our energies into getting a sponsorship
We worked simultaneously on two plans to get a sponsor. While creating materials that would talk about our project, aims and needs, we also dedicated ourselves to contacting people and institutions to help us achieve our ultimate goal. This way, we were able to succeed, getting the sponsorship from Itaipu Binacional.
Our partnership with Itaipu is very productive and symbolic since it is one of the world’s most giant power plants, and it’s always incentivising the development in every area of knowledge.
We believe that funding has made us grow both as researchers, that in our context need to seek ways to carry out their investigations, and as citizens, getting to know other ways of production and transformation of reality with entities beyond the university.
More details of how we achieve this on "How to fund?"".
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*Apart from when we did a raffle to help our partner NGO Amigo Peludo gather animal food money.